Patience Grasshopper…sometimes these maps take a few seconds to load.

Here are some initial views of our density maps that can be explored interactively. We’re working on the display-settings, and we’re very happy to have feedback. Tell us what you think (be nice please 🙂 ).

Please read the details below. These predictions are most accurate at the broad scale (city-wide), but they still provide interesting approximate estimates when you zoom in to a particular neighbourhood. Have fun!

A huge Thank-You goes out to Genevieve Perkins: she’s the volunteer who has been building these interactive versions of our density maps. Thanks Gen!

These maps show the predicted density of bird species across Ottawa (birds/ hectare). You can overlay multiple species (although it gets more difficult to see details), or flip through each species in turn. Click the check-box beside each species’ name to turn the species density on or off.

Please Note: these predictions provide an estimate of the average density of each species, during the peak of the breeding season (~late May – early July). They are best viewed at a broad scale (city-wide), but you can get a general idea of density in any area of the city by zooming in. In general, remember that these predictions are most accurate at the city-wide scale, but they may not be as accurate for your backyard :-). As you zoom in, the predictions will be less precise and may be more or less accurate depending on how similar that particular area is to the surrounding neighbourhood (e.g., don’t expect a lot of American Robins in the middle of the road, or a parking lot, but you can expect these predictions to work well for the lawns and trees around the road). These surfaces were generated using data from the OBC point count program, a habitat base-map, a statistical analysis, and some geo-spatial interpolation techniques. One final caveat: these predictions were produced from data collected in the early years of the Ottawa Bird Count (pre-2011), so they will not work for any areas of the city that have changed (e.g., been developed) since then. Although in these situations, these predictions provide an interesting view of what birds were there before the development…